Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

“If Jason still haunts you… you’re not alone.“

―Tagline

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (also known as Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning) is the fifth entry of the film series.

According to the trivia section on the film’s IMDB page, A New Beginning had to be submitted to the MPAA nine times before they would issue it an R-rating.

Some online sources offer a slightly different cut of the film, which utilizes different camera angles and deletes certain footage.

Plot

The film opens on a rainy night and shows a small boy in a yellow raincoat walking through the dark woods. He comes upon a graveyard and the small boy is shown to be Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman). Tommy witnesses two grave robbers trying to dig up mass murderer Jason Voorhees’ body, but before they can do so, Jason arises and murders both of the grave robbers, as Tommy watches in horror. Jason then stands up and begins to advance towards Tommy, who stares up at him in absolute fear, and as Jason raises a machete into the air ready to kill Tommy…

Actually, the cemetery sequence was all a dream and Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd), now 17, awakens from the nightmare in the back of a van. It has been several years since the events of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Tommy has been shifted around to different mental institutions after, in self-defense, he killed mass murderer Jason Voorhees, who attacked his sister and murdered his mother five years earlier. Tommy’s sister, who only suffered some injuries, is presumed to be elsewhere.

Tommy arrives at a secluded halfway house for troubled teens in the middle of the woods of southern California, called Pinehurst Halfway House. The house is owned by Dr. Matthew Letter (Richard Young) and a supervisor, Pam (Melanie Kinnaman), who shows Tommy to his room. There he meets a young boy named Reggie (Shavar Ross), who lives at the house since his grandfather, George (Vernon Washington), works as a cook at the halfway house. Also at the halfway house, are the sex-crazed lovers Tina (Debi Sue Voorhees) and Eddie (John Robert Dixon), ill-tempered Goth chick Violet (Tiffany Helm), redhead Robin (Juliette Cummins), shy, stuttering Jake (Jerry Pavlon), an overweight teenager named Joey (Dominick Brascia) – who is found by everyone else to be quite annoying – and a guy named Vic (Mark Venturini), who has severe anger problems.

Tommy witnesses the police drop off Tina and Eddie back at Pinehurst, who have been making love on a neighbor’s property. Said neighbors arrive via motorcycle, the obnoxious redneck Ethel Hubbard (Carol Locatell) and her dim-witted son Junior (Ron Sloane). Ethel warns everyone there to stay off of their property or else she’ll take a shotgun to all of them.

Later that day, while Vic is chopping wood with an axe, Joey begins to unintentionally aggravate Vic to the point where Vic begins to hack Joey with the axe, killing him. The police arrest Vic and one of the paramedics, Duke (Caskey Swaim), jokes about Joey’s death, but another paramedic, Roy Burns (Dick Wieand), is obviously saddened by the death.

That night, two local punks Vinnie (Anthony Barrile) and his pal Pete (Corey Parker) are driving down a remote road when their car stalls. Vinnie tries to fix the car while Pete heads into the surrounding woods to do his business. Vinnie is murdered shortly afterwards by an unseen assailant, who shoves a lit road flare into Vinnie’s mouth. Pete returns to find the car working, and while sitting in the driver’s seat, the killer lunges from the backseat and slashes Pete’s throat. The next morning, Tommy sees a hallucination of Jason in his bedroom and gets into a fight with Eddie at breakfast, who uses one of Tommy’s masks to scare everyone.

The following night, a worker at the halfway house, Billy (Bob DeSimone), awaits outside of a local diner in his car for his girlfriend Lana (Rebecca Wood), who works at the diner. While waiting, the killer murders Billy by swinging an axe into his head. Lana comes outside and she is attacked and killed with an axe to the chest.

The next day, Tina and Eddie sneak off into the woods to have sex against Matthew’s orders. While they make love, a drifter named Raymond, hired by Ethel to clean her chicken coop, notices them. He stares for a few moments before the peeping tom is stabbed in the stomach by the killer. Eddie leaves to wash off in the creek, and while Tina lies nude in a clearing, she is suddenly murdered when the killer plunges a pair of hedge clippers into her eyes. Eddie returns to find his lover dead, and backs into a tree, horrified, and is also killed when someone wraps a leather strap around his head and crushes his skull against the tree by tightening the strap.

That evening, Tommy, Pam and Reggie go to a local trailer park to visit Reggie’s older brother Demon (Miguel A. Nunez, Jr.) and his girlfriend Anita (Jere Fields). While there, Tommy gets into another fight, this time with Ethel’s son Junior who taunts him on his motorcycle and speeds away. Tommy then runs away into the woods, forcing Pam and Reggie to leave. Pam leaves Reggie at the halfway house, with Robin, Violet, and Jake, and then goes to search for Tommy, after discovering Matt and George have gone missing.

Junior races back to Ethel’s house to tell her what Tommy did and is murdered by the killer who decapitates him. The killer then kills Ethel while she is cooking stew, and swings a meat cleaver through the kitchen window and into her skull. Back at the halfway house, Jake tries to have sex with Robin, who rejects him and goes to her room. Jake, insulted, tries to talk to Violet but is thwarted by the killer, who kills him with a meat cleaver. The killer then murders Robin while she lies on the top bunk of her bed, by shoving a machete through the mattress and into her body. Violet is murdered next by a machete to the stomach.

Reggie wakes up and finds the bodies of Robin, Violet, and Jake. Pam arrives and also sees the bodies. Pam and Reggie try to flee the house, but encounter the killer, who reveals himself to be a large man in a hockey mask. Pam and Reggie flee the halfway house and run through the woods. They come upon an ambulance only to find Duke’s corpse inside. Jason appears and gives chase, and Pam and Reggie become separated. Pam runs back to the halfway house, finding Matt and George’s bodies in the process, both have been killed by the killer.

The killer chases Pam all the way to the barn, but Reggie saves her by ramming the killer with a tractor. The two of them investigate the killer’s body, who springs to life again and makes a grab for Reggie, but Pam kicks him in the head to fight him off.

Pam and Reggie seek refuge inside the barn, and Pam fends the killer off with a chainsaw, and then escapes to the loft with Reggie. the killer begins to follow, but Tommy suddenly appears and distracts the killer. Tommy, who falls into a trance, finally coming face-to-face with the masked killer. The killer injures Tommy with his machete, but Tommy stabs the killer in the thigh with his knife and escapes to the loft with Pam and Reggie, but passes out due to his injuries. the killer climbs up to the loft and after a brief altercation, Reggie manages to knock the killer off of the loft.

But the killer is still hanging on to the side of the loft. He grabs Reggie by the leg and begins to climb back up, but Tommy musters up enough strength to grab the killer’s discarded machete and partially chops his hand off. the killer loses his grip and plummets down to the ground, landing on a tractor harrow, impaling and killing him. Pam, Reggie and Tommy all look over the edge of the barn loft, to see that the killer’s mask has fallen off, revealing the killer to be not Jason, but the paramedic Roy Burns.

At the hospital, the Sheriff explains to Pam that Joey, the boy who was killed with an axe by Vic, was Roy’s son, thus triggering Roy’s seek for revenge. Pam checks on Tommy, who appears to be asleep, but suddenly pops up, withdrawing a boning knife, and stabs Pam in the stomach, killing her. But this is all revealed to be another of Tommy’s nightmares. Later, Pam enters the room again to see the window broken, as Tommy stands behind her, wearing a hockey mask and raising a knife above Pam’s head.

Cast & Characters

Trivia

As a result of being killed off in the previous film, Jason Voorhees appears in this film only in dreams and hallucinations. The killer in this film is Roy Burns who disguises as Jason. Originally, the producers had planned to make a new trilogy of films featuring a different villain, but this was scrapped in response to the backlash regarding Jason’s absence. Jason was brought back for the next film.

Deaths

Neil (Dream): Stabbed in the stomach (3 MINS)
Les (Dream): Stabbed in the neck (3 MINS)
Joey Burns: Hacked with an axe (21 MINS)
Vinnie Manalo: Road flare in the mouth (25 MINS)
Pete Linley: Throat slit (26 MINS)
Billy Macauley: Axed in the head (37 MINS)
Lana Ardsley: Axe to the stomach (38 MINS)
Raymond Joffroy: Stabbed (43 MINS)
Tina McCarthy: Shears to the eyes (45 MINS)
Eddie Kelso: Head crushed (46 MINS)
Anita Robb: Throat slit (Off-screen, 55 MINS)
Demon Winter: Impaled through back (55 MINS)
Junior Hubbard: Decapitated (58 MINS)
Ethel Hubbard: Cleaver to the face (58 MINS)
Jake Patterson: Cleaver to the face (1 HR 3 MINS)
Robin Brown: Impaled through back (1 HR 6 MINS)
Violet Moraine: Stabbed in the stomach (1 HR 7 MINS)
Duke Johnson: Throat slit (Off-Screen, 1 HR 11 MINS)
Dr. Matthew Letter: Stabbed in the forehead (Off-Screen, 1 HR 12 MINS)
George Winter: Eyes gouged out (Off-Screen, 1 HR 13 MINS)
Roy Burns: Impaled on farm spikes (1 HR 22 MINS)
Pam Roberts (Dream): Stabbed in the stomach (1 HR 26 MINS)

Survivors

Tommy Jarvis
Reggie Winter
Pam Roberts
Sheriff Cal Tucker
Deputy Dodd
Mayor Cobb
Victor Faden

Reception

This film is widely considered to be the worst in the series, mainly because of the twist ending. The previous film in the series bore the subtitle The Final Chapter and the producers of this installment intended to take the franchise in a new direction, but fan outrage over the infamous twist ending led to a more traditional approach with Jason Lives. Some fans consider A New Beginning to be the “black sheep” in the series. However, in recent years, some fans seem to have warmed up to this movie and accept it as part of the series.

Video

Friday_The_13th,_Part_V_A_New_Beginning_(1985)_Theatrical_Trailer